Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire
hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection.
Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached to
think of it. And it was so light too; the sun
shining in at the window, and a great rattling of
coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices
all over the house. I felt worse and worse—­
at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in
my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and
suddenly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her
as a particular favor to give me a good slippering
for my misbehaviour: anything indeed but condemning
me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time.
But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers,
and back I had to go to my room. For several
hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal
worse than I have ever done since, even from the greatest
subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen
into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking
from it—­half steeped in dreams—­I
opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now
wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a
shock running through all my frame; nothing was to
be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural
hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over
the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent
form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed
closely seated by my bed-side. For what seemed
ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most
awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet
ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single
inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew
not how this consciousness at last glided away from
me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered
it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards
I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the
mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle
myself with it.

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at
feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar,
in their strangeness, to those which I experienced
on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm
thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s
events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality,
and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament.
For though I tried to move his arm—­ unlock
his bridegroom clasp—­yet, sleeping as he
was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught
but death should part us twain. I now strove
to rouse him—­“Queequeg!”—­but
his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over,
my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and
suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside
the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by
the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced
baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed
here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal
and a tomahawk! “Queequeg!—­in
the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length,
by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations